


Dragon Age Heroes

by vaguely_concerned



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, F/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-27 12:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7617946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The romance from Cassandra's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Peter Adaar

**One.**

The mark pulses, a sickening green heartbeat reflecting the tear in the sky. The prisoner’s hand is curled up around it, casting strange shadows across the walls of the cell - his black hair has loosened from its braid and hangs over his face like a curtain draped over the horns.

“What do you _mean_ , you do not understand it?”

The apostate sits back on his heels, withdrawing his fingers and gently putting down the much larger hand he’s been studying. “Exactly what I said. It was hardly a riddle, Seeker.”

“You said you could make sense of it! You must -”

The mage blinks impassively back at her. “I’m afraid it is not simply a matter of declaring it loudly enough. I have tried… everything I can think of. I am sorry; I do not know how to fix this.”

She paces back and forth across the cell floor, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Varric is watching her guardedly. “So you cannot tell me what sort of magic this is.”

“No.” He glances down at the mark. “I am only surprised it has not killed him already. It is… unexpected.”

The rage rises in her at the faint intellectual curiosity in his voice. This is no game. “Maybe we should find a cell for you too, apostate.”

His eyes narrow. “Certainly. If you think _that_ is going to help the people who are dying out there, I will gladly pick the manacles out myself.”

“Do not pretend there is no cause to  -”

The prisoner gives a small moan, and the chains clink as he shifts minutely. They all turn to him, stunned into silence.

“...I think he’s waking up,” Varric says after a while. “Damn. Say what you want about the Qunari, they’re hardy.”

“That is…”  begins the mage, making to move closer. She steps into his path.

“ _Leave_ ,” she snarls, the word clawing its way out her throat as the prisoner stirs again. Her hand tightens on the sword hilt; she had not realized she’d been grasping it. “Both of you. Get out of my sight.”

Varric raises his eyebrows. “Cassandra, isn’t it -”

“ _Now_.”

He looks at her for a long moment and seems on the edge of saying something more, then his shoulders hitch up jerkily in a shrug. “If you say so. Come on, Chuckles, let’s get going before she decides we’re the hidden masterminds behind this whole thing. It’s only a question of time, I’m sure.”

As Varric walks away the mage lingers, staring at the mark with an odd look on his face. “I am sorry I could not do more,” he says quietly. “Good luck, Seeker.” He follows Varric out the door, a grey shadow slinking back into the darkness. Leliana glances in and raises an eyebrow and Cassandra nods to let them go.

She wonders if Galyan was in pain, or if it happened too quickly for him to feel anything. The rage - because that is what it is, anger and nothing more, nothing less useful - clogs up her chest and makes it hard to breathe.

The prisoner opens his eyes, and she steps forward. Her blood is simultaneously boiling and freezing - _For she who puts her trust in the Maker, fire is her water._

His big head turns to follow her as she moves around him, swaying a little.

When she speaks her voice is thick with bile and the strain of inaction. “Tell me why we shouldn’t just kill you now.”

 

\-----

 

He is… not what she had expected. The way he clings so confusedly, so heartbrokenly to his innocence - it almost makes her think… but the facts are what they are. There is no purpose to be served by being swayed by overwrought emotion, one way or the other.

It is hard to believe Justinia is truly _gone_ ; it seems to Cassandra that she can feel kind eyes and a lifted eyebrow at the back of her neck with every step they take up the mountain path.

Half-way up the path the prisoner stumbles, then falls to his knees with a whimper and clutches his hand to his chest. She bends down and grabs him under the arm to help him to his feet. Under the mercenary coat he feels slighter than he looks.

His eyes are wide and beseeching, as if he wants answers from her. She has none to give him. There’s pain and confusion written all over his face; she pats his arm clumsily.

“The pulses are coming faster now,” she says, reminding herself that he’d come willingly, that he’d wanted to do whatever he could to help.

The open, bleeding wound in the sky makes everything green and unearthly. They’re getting closer.

 

\-----

 

She carefully turns him over on his back when some of the glow of the mark fades and the rift is closed, and the fever has already taken hold of him. She rests her hand on his forehead and feels it burning beneath the skin.

“What do we do?” she asks Solas.

He kneels beside her, tracing the skin around the mark with long, pale fingers. His face is strange - distant and intense all at once. “He needs medical attention immediately. We must get him somewhere safe.”

And she would have carried him to safety all on her own if she had to, because she’d never thought she would be there to bear witness one of the Maker’s miracles.  

But now she has.

 

**Two**

He is such a big man, but he walks as if he wants to be smaller, as if he’s in some way apologizing for taking up so much space. He slouches through the streets of Val Royeaux and between the buildings of Haven, ducking his head and smiling his bright, bashful smile.

In some ways he is every bit the politician that she isn’t - he has that ease to him that she’s never understood, a way with people that can’t be magic but might as well be, as far as she’s concerned. If the whole world was on fire and he showed up with his grin and his swagger and his _voice_ , he could convince everyone to form up in an orderly line to get out. Well. Perhaps that is not too far off what is actually happening right now. It almost annoys her, because for all his charisma he does not appear to have any real ambitions; more often than not he turns to _her_ when actual decisions must be made. It’s like watching a powerful warship bobbing aimlessly around in open water with no one at the wheel.

 

\----

 

One day she’s sitting at her desk, reviewing their supply situation - meager to disastrous at the moment - when he appears in the doorway.

“Oh, uh, hey,” he says, pausing on the doorstep and smiling hesitantly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. Have you seen Josephine lately? She said I could have some parchment yesterday but she, uh, seems to have been temporarily capsized by a duchess or something.”

“It is no trouble,” she hurries to say, standing up and leaning over her desk. “And yes, Josephine has been rather… preoccupied these last few days. I do not believe she sleeps anymore.”

“Well, I guess she does have half of Orlais to bribe,” he says philosophically. “That must be a full-time sort of enterprise.”

She snorts a laugh and flips through the papers on her desk for a blank one. “Indeed. What do you need the parchment for?”

He puts his hands on his back and rocks back and forth on his heels. “Actually I thought I should… write to my parents, tell them how I’m doing. Pretty sure Shokrakar already gave them word but, um,” he makes a face, “as I’m sure you’ve noticed, her letter writing doesn’t necessarily provide much in the way of clarity or comfort.”

“As the ‘little sharp human’,” Cassandra says, finding a few blank sheets of parchment and rolling them together tightly, “I would agree.”

“And you know, parents. They worry. Mom is likely to come down here and march straight into Haven if I don’t dissuade her personally.”

“I better let you have this, then.” Cassandra gives him the parchment. “For our own safety.”

He smiles brilliantly and makes a small bow, the smarmy bastard. “Thank you very much, Lady Seeker. See how much easier things are when we talk before we shieldbash?”

She shuts the door in his face, but in a companionable way.

 

\----

 

A few months later and this man - this so-called brutish oxman from the North, over a head taller than anyone else in the room, mystic messenger from the Beyond - comes into a war table meeting wearing a horribly misshapen knitted sweater with festive patterns of fluffy nugs on it. It is perhaps the most hideous thing ever committed to knitting needle.

“Oh, this? It’s a gift from my father,” he declares proudly at their looks, tugging at his left sleeve as if that is going to make up for the fact that it is several inches shorter than the right. “He’s pretty crafty like that. Admittedly his eyesight is starting to go a little, bless him,” he adds, peering down at the rather wonky nug that rests right over his left nipple.

“It must be very… warm and comfortable,” Josephine says, sounding strangled.

“I, uh, yes. Indeed,” Cullen says, eyes firmly fixed on a spot of table in front of him.

“Festive,” Cassandra says.

“Oh, it is so _cute_!” Leliana coos, reaching out to touch the fluffy nugs. “May I? Aw, they’re all soft and cuddly!”

“I’ll tell Father you said so,” says the Herald - Adaar, really, it is very hard to think of that sweater belonging to the messenger of any higher power.“Oh, and look at the back…”

He turns around to reveal that the back says, in rather shaky lettering:

HAPPY

FUNALIS

“He said he was going to write ‘Happy Satinalia’, but it turned out to be too long,” Adaar says by way of explanation. “All Souls’ Eve isn’t strictly nug-related, but I feel it works in a pinch.”

Cassandra suspects that this sweater is a novel form of heresy and should be summarily burned. She is in no way charmed.

“So,” Adaar says, putting down the mug of tea he’d brought with him. “What was that you were saying about Therinfall, Cullen?”

**Three.**

He laughs like a boy, freely and easily, as if the whole world is on the verge of spring and the thaw just hasn’t reached us yet.

**Four.**

He does not believe - at least not in the Maker.

Perhaps it should not surprise her - the Chantry has hardly made an effort to appeal to the Qunari, or… whatever it is they call themselves when they turn from the Qun. Besides it turns out to be an indelible part of his personality; he does not seem plagued by strong conviction of any kind, a lack of overt passion and direction that had driven her to distraction at first, before she could see beyond it. He has no ambition for himself, but he would step between a striking blade and an innocent every time. In a world with no shortage of either, perhaps that is more important.

And yet - yet now, with the stars filling the sky like faraway cities and his breath soft and warm against her neck while he sleeps, she finds it hard to remember the doubt that has been edging at her heart ever since Justinia’s conclave shattered. He smiles sleepily when she brushes her fingers through his hair, burrowing closer under the blanket and tightening the arm he has slung over her. The candles are almost burned down.

 _Maker,_ she thinks, brushing her lips against the top of his head. _Maker, I have failed in so many things. Let me do this one thing right. Let me keep him safe._

**Five.**

He stands leaned against the battlements, his shoulders slumped as if recently relieved of some heavy burden. In his hand is something glowing faintly with magic; he’s working intently on it.

“You slipped away from me for a minute there,” she says lightly, taking up position beside him. The thing in his hand turns out to be a rose made out of a bluish metal, copper wire being shaped into a stem. It’s beautiful, and he puts it away immediately when he hears her voice. It’s for her, then. “It was very unkind, leaving me to weather the counts on my own like that.”

“Yeah,” he says with a small laugh. “I think I’m developing an allergy to canapes. If I never again see an Orlesian caterer closing in on me with a tray and a determined expression, that’d be fine with me.”

“They are very dogged. Like vultures. Vultures in exquisite silk.”

“You can say that again.”

They stand in companionable silence for a while, but he doesn’t say anything more. In the end she asks: “What is bothering you, my love?”

He sighs and rubs at his face. “Oh, it’s nothing, I’m just being… stupid.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“It’s just… I spent a lot of my life trying to make sure I didn’t stand out any more than I had to. It’s weird, sometimes, not being able to…” For once he seems to struggle for words. “Well, not fade into the background, exactly, that’s too much to ask for when you’re two heads taller than anyone else. It would just be nice to… not always be the Inquisitor, if you see what I mean.”

Cassandra, who has never managed to be anyone but herself no matter how hard she tried, nods slowly. “I think I do.”

She forgets sometimes that he is still quite young - younger than her, anyway. And where she’d been too inflexible he is too yielding, too willing to bend himself out of shape for other people. She puts her hand on his shoulder. He looks down at her.

“Well, at least we’re not alone, then,” he says.

“At least we have that,” she says, her heart skipping a beat in her chest.

 

**Six.**

When she comes in he’s lying on her bed, reading a book by a strange blue flame he must have conjured himself. His long lanky body is dark against the sheets of her bed, his hair loose and falling in lazy waves over his bare chest as he turns another page - it’s one of Varric’s, it had been lying on her nightstand. Her throat feels tight.

He must hear her enter, though she’s now standing stock still in the middle of the floor, unable to move. He looks up and smiles, blue eyes crinkling. “Hey there,” he says, putting the book down. “I thought Josephine had trapped you in an eternal tea party there for a minute.”

She can’t speak for a moment, can’t see anything that isn’t his narrow, oh-so-welcome face.

“I did not know you would be here,” she blurts out, the damned blush rising to her cheeks again.

“Oh.” His face falls and he sits up quickly, swinging his legs off the bed and making to stand. “I’m sorry, it’s just, since you gave me the key I thought - if it makes you uncomfortable - “

“No!” she yelps, holding up her hands like she’s trying to ward off a charging bull, “no, please stay. I just… I had not expected it.”

He smiles a tentatively ingratiating smile and throws his hands up. “So… surprise?”

“Quite a welcome one, at that,” she says, kicking off her boots and then moving towards the bed. His grin settles for real.

“Is that so?”

“Hm. Maybe I’ll  have to test it more thoroughly to be sure.” She crawls up on the bed and straddles him, his hands settling lightly on her hips.

He sighs mock-dramatically. “Work, work, work,” he says, smiling against her mouth as she leans down to kiss him.

**Seven.**

Her first clue is the song outside her door. It’s not _bad_ song, per se - he does have a beautiful voice, and he even gets most of the words right - but it’s delivered with the kind of sincerity that only seems like a good idea deep into your fourth mug of ale. And, she realizes, some of the lyrics are what can only be described as _lewd_.  ‘Gathering nuts in Bloomingtide’.  Indeed.

She kicks the covers away and walks over to the door, opening it with a shove of her hip. She’s met by a look of wide-eyed surprise, followed by a grin.

“Cassandra, my indestructible force of nature,” he says, as if surprised to find her behind her own door. She folds her arms across her chest. “I was looking for you everywhere!”

“Are you _drunk_?” she demands, amused despite herself. He’s swaying gently and apparently trying to decide whether focusing on her would be easier with one eye closed or not.

“Completely wasted,” he agrees, serenely drifting to the left until he hits the doorframe and then bouncing back. “Bull had… a thing. For the dragons. You could’ve used the stuff for armor polish.”

“And you put away most of it, I gather,” she says dryly, taking his arm and guiding him over the doorstep.

“No,” he says mournfully. “Bull had more than me. Lots. He’s just so… big. Like a big, big alcohol sponge.”

“Right.” If she is to play the straight man for the rest of their lives, she’d be fine with that. After all she’s had plenty of training with Varric; she is thoroughly prepared.

“Cabot is nice, though. Grumpy, but nice. He said my poetry was ‘not completely atrocious, I suppose’.”

“High praise indeed. Why were you reading him poetry?”

“I’m… dabbling.” He fumbles with the buttons of his overcoat.

“And why haven’t _I_ heard of your poetic escapades until now?”

“It’s not _done_ yet,” he says, shrugging the coat off with some difficulty. “I want it to be a surprise. Wait. Damn.”

“I promise to act very surprised when you’re done, then,” she says, holding back a laugh at his crestfallen face. “Let me help you with that.”

She reaches out and unbuttons his shirt, letting the backs of her fingers brush against his chest. His skin is so warm, the curly hair scratchy on her hands.

“You’ve got pretty hands,” he murmurs, stroking a thumb over her knuckles and looking down at them with more fascination than they should warrant.

“You are delusional,” she informs him. “My hands are one big callus only interrupted by scars, nothing ‘pretty’ about them. Stop that,” she adds, though she makes no effort to pull her hands away from him as he kisses the back of one so very gently. When his face comes to rest there she strokes the thumb of her other hand over his stubbled cheek.

“This is like a boat,” he declares after a while. “Everything going up and down. Though I do feel like that all the time when I see you. All… out of balance and stuff. In a good way, I mean.”

He sways so far to the right that she gives him a gentle push and sits him down on the edge of the bed. “I think you should lay down. Before your sea legs give out on you.”

“Already have.”

He lies back and closes his eyes.

“I miss Shokrakar, sometimes. And my parents. I wish they could meet you. Because you’re great and you kill _dragons_ and they probably wouldn’t be worried about me anymore if they knew you were watching my back.” He makes a face. “You know, Shokrakar never lets me drink like this when she’s around. Says I get too honest. And I’m like ‘what d’you mean, too honest?’. And she’s like ‘you keep telling people that you love aaall of us and I’m not good at that sappy shit, kid, even if it is true’.”

After a while he puts his arm over his face so his eyes are hidden in the crook of his elbow.

“‘The Herald of Andraste,” he says. There’s unusual bitterness in his voice. “It does seem like a big cosmic joke sometimes, and I’m pretty sure it’s on me. All I wanted was to lay low, stay out of trouble, take care of my parents, and here I am - going down in history as a fucking icon for a god I’ve never believed in, working for an organization that locks up people like me. I never wanted to touch the Chantry with a ten foot pole. This whole thing is so far from laying low that I’m coming out the other side, where everyone knows what I am but not who.”

She stands in her smallclothes at the side of their bed, not knowing what to say.

“Sorry. I’m sorry,” he mumbles, arm still slung over his face. “I know it’s important to you. And - well. I wouldn’t have met you if  all of this hadn’t happened. Kind of worth it.”

Her heart sinks a little. “What…” She hesitates, but she’s wanted to ask him for quite some time now. “What _do_ you believe in?”

“Love,” he says immediately, then: “and don’t you scoff at me, Cassandra Pentaghast, talk about a pot calling a kettle black.”

“I said nothing!” she protests, kneeling on the bed and struggling not to laugh. “But… really?”

“Mhm. It was…” he lets his arm fall away, looks up at the ceiling with curious blue eyes. “It was what made my parents leave the Qun, and what makes other people stay. It was what they gave me even though they had never been taught why. It’s what gives anything any meaning.”

“That… was almost profound.”

“Don’t worry, it’s probably just the armor polish talking. I’ll be back to normal in no time.”

She shakes her head and kisses him, pulling the covers up over them. She lies awake for a while, thinking. Anthony is dead, and yet here they are still hunting dragons. She wonders what that means.

“I don’t believe in your Maker, but I do believe in you,” he whispers into the nape of her neck, right before she falls asleep. “Maybe that can be enough.”

 

**Eight.**

“May I have this dance, Lady Cassandra?”

“...a dance? After all we’ve been through tonight? You cannot be serious.”

“Oh, I absolutely am. Can you think of a better way to celebrate?”

And he has that look in his eyes, the fondness and the cleverness and the humour. She steps close and takes his hand.

They dance and he sings softly in her ear, brushing his lips over her jaw and holding her close. She shuts her eyes.

“ _We’re all fools here, Cassandra._ ”And she doesn’t feel alone anymore.

“You cannot court me,” in fear, her heart feeling too open, her shield lowered in a way her tutors would never have forgiven her. They’re at war. There are a thousand things that could go wrong; she can’t add the chance that she’ll be completely shattered to all the other burdens.“You cannot be that man.” But he has beautiful eyes and gentle hands and a smile that makes her happy. _“You won’t even let me try?”_

 _“If I’m guided by anything, it’s you,”_ the blind leading the blind, “Then clearly you haven’t been paying attention,” - _“Haven’t I?”._

He had wanted to read Varric’s book with her. He had made her poetry. The wiry bulk of him sets something in her stomach ablaze.

This Maker-damned ball would have been insufferable without him.

“I love you,” she says, quietly, while the music still plays.

“I know,” he says, and she feels his grin against the side of her neck.

 

**Nine.**

Yet another small, inconsequential village; yet another group of innocents caught on the wrong side of a rift. This time no one died - a mage from Skyhold had shielded the villagers while they dealt with the demons, and then the mark had healed the rift in the sky. It is a strange day, summer edging into autumn and no graves to dig. The villagers have brought out beer and pies and fruits, demanding that they stay for the feast. The air is warm, despite Dorian’s complaints from within his nest of blankets, and someone is playing music. For a second she wishes she could draw, just to have some way to hold on to this moment in the village square, with people laughing and dancing and Iron Bull helping Sera up on a nearby rooftop for unspecified but probably nefarious purposes.

Solas is helping the village healer with the few wounds suffered - it has been funny how much more accepting people are of mages when they are bleeding profusely.  

Varric clears his throat and shifts a little where he’s sitting on the bench beside her. ”So, things are going well with… you know, you and the boss?”

Her eyes search for him, route, a habit she fears a life time could not eradicate, even if he… well. Even if he weren’t there anymore.

(They’re at war. She must not forget, not again.)

The great leader of the Inquisition, one of the most powerful men in all of Thedas, the one light the Maker sent her in this darkness - and he’s on his hands and knees in the grass, playing with the village children, letting a little boy braid flowers into his long dark hair and slide garlands over his horns.

She wants to say: _Tell me how you do it. Tell me how you use words so they all understand you. Tell me how you wrap the people you love in stories until they are safe and protected and, in some small way, outside the reach of death. Tell me how you make some realer truth with all your lies._  

Instead she says: “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Varric.”

He coos. “Well, well, well. That good, huh?”

She calls him a very rude word, but her cheeks feel warm and the smile is hard to banish.

“He’s a good kid. A bit like quicksilver, of course - you pour him into whatever mold you need and he’ll flow into the shape.” He glances at her. “But you’d have to look a long time for someone with a better heart. You’ve made a pretty excellent catch there, congrats.”

And she doesn’t feel the need to defend him, because as always Varric’s insight is as incisive as it is annoying. But they had needed the Inquisitor, and he had made himself into just that, leading them through mountain passes and through despair to a new home.

“I have no regrets.”

“That’s more than most people can hope for,” Varric says, then goes to find the pastries. A little girl gives her a daisy chain and tells her that her husband is funny.

It’s a good day.

 

**Ten.**

It’s so late that is has started to become early again, the sun creeping golden-pink over the mountains, and his arm is resting over her waist, warm and comforting. She doesn’t remember when this went from being the Inquisitor’s quarters to their rooms.

She can’t sleep.

After a while she sighs and edges out from under the covers, careful not to wake him. Sitting at the side of the bed in her smallclothes she rubs at her face, looking around the room.

_Up on the battlements, fresh from victorious battle - that moment when she let hope properly enter her heart again._

_“I don’t care what’s next, as long as we’re together,” he’d said._

_“And if I’m Divine?”_

_His face dropped a little, but he stood firm.“Then… you’re Divine.”_

_And there it was, the grace disguised as passivity.Though he’d made no secret as to how he felt about the Chantry, he would support her no matter the outcome, and it had made her want to stay all the more. She took his hand and they looked at the mountains._

_“I mean, just think about the hat, Cassandra,” he said after a while. “It’s so majestic. You’d never be able to go through a door again without ducking. Can you really pass that up?”_

_She had elbowed him in the ribs, and he had laughed._

So many stories she wants to tell, so many moments she wants to keep.

She really had thought that was it, back in Haven. That he had been the price they had to pay in exchange for victory over Corypheus. All that had gone through her head was an unspoken prayer - _please, Maker, not again._

And then he stepped out of the rubble, covered in dust but unharmed and immediately cracking jokes. It was about the hundredth miracle the Maker had let her see.  

For some long minutes she watches the mountains, trying to make sense of it, trying to untangle what she feels. Leliana is to be Divine, Justinia is still gone, Cassandra has duties yet to come. After a while she pulls the covers up over his shoulder and sits down at the desk, everything as open and as quiet as the moment when her vigil was unmoored from struggle and unfolded into faith.

Slowly, deliberately, she pulls out a piece of parchment and starts writing.

 


	2. Dina Cadash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dina Cadash takes a trip down memory lane to the time when she was a wee little thing and went on her first massacre.

Dina hailed Cabot for a refill - sweet, sticky blackberry juice these days; she’d stopped drinking after Haven. It seemed safer. She’d been a hairsbreadth and a prayer from becoming an alcoholic for most of her adult life - it was a family tradition of sorts.

Her family. She wasn’t sure how she felt about them now, or how they’d really be feeling about her after she cut most ties. Well, of course she _missed_ some of them- her father, Karck, Mela, Sarka - but they were all inextricably tangled up in the organization, in her grandmother’s plots, and there was one part of her life she hadn’t been sorry to see go. She’d never chosen that line of work, she’d just stayed for almost forty years because it was the family business and she didn’t know how to do anything else.

Her father still sent her tentative letters she didn’t know how to answer.  

She stroked her finger over the scar across the left side of her face, remembering why she’d wanted out in the first place.

 

**\-------**

 

“What -“ she begins, everything a hot feverish mess. She tries to reach out, clawing at the whirling shapes coming at her. Her face, her ribs, her arm; everything hurts, it _burns_.

When she feels a grip on her arm she strikes out, feeling her already bloody knuckles give a last warning crack on impact - despite herself she gives a pathetic, breathless whine - as there’s an indignant squawk from somewhere nearby.

“Ow! _Ow!_ What in the everloving Void are you -”

Karck’s voice in the distance, gruff and vaguely panicked: “Shit. Shit, shit, fuck - I’m so sorry, I didn’t think she could do that, I… hold on.”

Strong arms pull tight around her, but he smells right, like family - like smoke and lyrium and that cologne he wears in the futile hope that Denna down at the ale house will notice - and so she lets herself collapse back into him as much as she can, trying to let her cramping muscles relax just a little.

“Dina,” her cousin says into her hair, hugging her close, “Dina, _salroka_ , sshh, it’s the healer. You’ve got to let her help you. Lie still, I’m here with you, I’m not going anywhere.”

She’s crying, but she only notices because the tears sting so fucking deep in the wound on her cheek. The healer? What’s that supposed to - oh. The apostate her grandmother hired on a more-or-less permanent basis last year. Uncle Haron had called it a waste of good coin. Grandmother had withheld his pay for a month. At the time it had seemed quite funny.

“Mythal’enaste,” mutters the apostate as she lifts her hands and touches them to Dina’s cheekbones. Her fingers are very cold, and a blessed numbness spreads from them. “I didn’t notice under all the blood - how _old_ is she?”

Karck is quiet for a while, his breathing rustling unsteadily through Dina’s hair. “Fourteen.”

The mage sputters, her hands disappearing. Dina whimpers as the pain returns with full force.

“ _Fourteen?_ You send _children_ to do your dirty -” She falters, then sighs, the blissfully cold touch returning. “Well, it’s none of my business, is it.  Your grandmother doesn’t pay me to ask questions.”

“She usually doesn’t,” Dina rasps, and the apostate huffs a little laughter.

“Truer words, girl, truer words… I know this stings like the blazes, but just try to keep still, okay?”

She means to nod, but the movement sends fire searing down her neck and it becomes merely a sharp cramp of a movement. Everything feels disgusting and slippery, like the sweat is her skin trying to twist itself off.  “Okay,” she wheezes.

Water sloshing in a bucket and a washcloth touching her face. “Let’s have a look at you, then. Hm. Broken nose… easy enough to fix… Lost a molar back there… it’s been too long for that, I don’t think I can do anything about it…”

“Yeah, but she’ll grow another one of them eventually, right?” Karck says hopefully.

“No, she won’t.”

“Oh.”

“Broken collarbone, looks like. Can you still move your shoulder? Well, colour me surprised. Hold still for a second…”

The healer pulls Dina’s sweat-soiled shirt down enough to stroke chilly fingers over her collarbone, moving them back and forth like she’s searching for something, and then gives one hard push, making Dina grit her teeth against the grinding sensation as the bone fragments click back together.

“Can you…” the apostate sounds uncomfortable. “Can you still see with this eye? Try to focus on my finger…”

She starts crying for real now, shaking so badly she wouldn’t have been able to sit upright if Karck hadn’t been holding her. Blind. Oh Stone, oh sodding Ancestors, what if she is going to be _blind_ on top of everything, Grandmother must already be _furious_ that she lost the package and who fucking knows what will happen to her if she’s deemed useless to…

The healer mutters something in a language Dina doesn’t know, pushing blood-soaked hair out of her forehead with surprising gentleness. “Kid, it’s going to be okay. Nothing I can’t fix. Hm, maybe Karck is right, you should have some of this.”

A cup is lifted to her lips and she sips carefully, then is immediately overcome by a rasping cough as it burns down her throat.

“Dad won’t let me have any booze,” she grates out, but the warm numbness spreading in her abdomen encourages her to take another sip. She wishes he were here, even if he’d be mad at her for being so reckless. She wishes she didn’t see the faces of the dead men on the floor every time she closes her eyes.

“I’m sure he’d make an exception for this.”

Karck pats her shoulder. “Hey, if you don’t tell him, I won’t either.”

When the mage is done Karck puts Dina down on the bed, tucking the covers around her. The potion the mage had given her made her sleepy, sending her straight into drowsing.

“You should have seen it,” Karck says, far away. “By the time we got there she’d taken out _six_ of them. Six! Grown men, and they’re stone dead, all of them.”

“What an uplifting story,” the apostate says dryly, followed by the sound of something snapping shut - her medicine case, maybe. “It’s almost like she won’t have a scar cutting her face in half for the rest of her life to commemorate her first count of wholesale slaughter.”

“Listen, we… we wouldn’t have sent her normally. She’s bright enough, and level-headed and good with numbers, but she’s just too young and…  well, it was supposed to be a simple pickup, she shouldn’t have had to be in direct contact with anybody if it hadn’t been a setup, and what with most of us off to Orzhammar for that big job -“

“Karck, stop. I don’t want to hear this.” There’s an awkward pause. “I know… I know you’re a good lad. Just take care of your cousin for me, all right? She’s strong, but she got lucky this time. And I don’t like having to work on kids. It’s not right.”

“...I’ll keep an eye on her. I promise.”

“Good.”

And then Dina didn’t hear anything anymore, swallowed up by darkness.

 

\-------

She took her fingers away from the scar and sighed.

“Something wrong?” Blackwall asked, sitting beside her on the bench with his mug of beer cradled in his hands.

“I - no, it’s nothing. Nevermind.”

“Very well. But if you want to tell me sometime, I’ll listen.”

She missed Solas. He was good at helping her put things in perspective, wrap concepts in words. There was a little corner of her head where he lived now, the sarcasm and the curiosity and the sadness. And the tinge of arrogance too, of course - not to mention the whole leaving without a word thing. She went and looked at his paintings sometimes when she couldn’t sleep, knowing he’d tried to tell her something but still not understanding what.

She bit her lip and tried to root out the right words on her own. “It’s just this whole… Inquisitor thing. I feel like a sodding con artist.”

He lifted his eyebrows, taken aback. “How so?”

“I’m a crook, Blackwall,” she said, swirling the sticky juice around in her mug. “I may be better dressed now and a little bit cleaner, but I’m still a crook. My line of work has just changed from peddling lyrium to…”

“World peace?” he offered. “Justice? Scandalized Orlesians? Ow,” he added, grinning as she nonchalantly kicked him in the knee.

“Where is my respect?” she said despairingly, draining her mug. “I can’t even have an existential crisis without someone breaking out the motivational speeches.”

“With _all_ due respect, my lady, I must say that if _you’re_ a crook… well, that brings quite a bit of hope to the rest of us.”  

His eyes were dark and soft, and he was one of hers now, no matter what - who - he was before. At least that was one thing they had in common: being reshaped from the inside as well as the outside. Maybe they’d have another crack at it eventually, when they’d figured out who those new people they were becoming turned out to be.

She leaned her head against his arm and sighed. His sweater smelled nice and familiar. “Well. It’s a start, anyway.”

 


	3. Sophia Amell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A cross section of Sophia Amell's life after the Fifth Blight.

**The tombstone reads: ‘Becoming Untethered’**

 

Irving found Sophia over by a punch table, presumably hiding from the bard who had been following her around for a scoop on the Hero of Ferelden’s love life.

“Are you enjoying yourself, my dear?”

She glanced up, standing a little straighter at the sound of his voice as if from old habit - and, he noted with some amusement, sliding her glass out of sight behind the punch bowl.

“It’s a nice change from the last few weeks. Certainly less undead running about. No darkspawn either. I would even have called it a win win situation if not for the nobles.”

“I am glad to hear it.” He leaned more of his weight on the table. His bones felt heavy these days, like a tired horse saddled with too many years.  “Now, with all the formalities out of the way… do I understand it correctly when I say you’ve found yourself a young man?”

A slight red tinge sneaked into her cheeks. “Wynne told you that, did she?”

“Well, yes, but she didn’t need to.”

“…then maybe you do understand it.” He wondered if he’d ever really seen a smile reach her eyes before. It was a sobering thought, considering how much she’d always smiled.

“That is good, then.”

She looked away, unable to banish the grin or the blush. This was unprecedented indeed. “Yes.”

“And very nearly heir to the throne there for a while. Isn’t that a catch and a half.”

At that she just snorted, though the implications floated around them like corpses in water; if Alistair Therin had taken the throne, he would no longer be her young man. Kings don’t marry mages.

He’d always been too attached to her, he knew that. Uldred had made no secret of the fact that he thought so. When the templars brought her in she’d been four years old and precocious, and she never had a single friend except for Jowan. Perhaps being First Enchanter was like this for everyone; like carrying a hundred children in your heart and forever worrying about them. Sophia, Jowan, that poor foolhardy boy from the Anderfels, untold little souls before them... perhaps they would just stay with his soul until it reached the Maker, so he could know He was looking out for them before he could rest.

And with Sophia you had to double the worrying. He fretted about her still, about how she seemed to play the social game so eloquently but never made any friends, about how you could practically see the rage radiate from her sometimes, some dark burning thing in the center of her driving her forward - but sometimes he also wondered what would happen to the rest of the world should she ever lose control. He’d taught her himself, he knew there was only so long you could dam up a force like the one she had been hiding for most of her life. But maybe Duncan had been right - maybe the Wardens was just the place for a soul like that. If the river was unleashed, at least it helped if it was directed towards darkspawn.

He wanted to tell her that there was only so long you could pretend, that with age and weariness it became harder and harder to hide and force yourself to be something you were not. He didn’t know how.  

“Is that bloody bard still following me?”

He stretched his neck to see and found said bard being vigorously conversed at by a red-headed young woman. “Your friend with the nug seems to be taking care of it.”

She blew out a sigh of relief. “Good. Leliana knows how to deal with that sort of thing.”

“What with her, the elven assassin, the Qunari and the golem, you do keep interesting company these days, my dear - ow.” He’d kept the weight on his bad leg for too long. He winced, struggling to keep his balance.

Like a flash of lightning she was standing beside him, supporting him with a hand under his arm. Even as a full grown woman she only reached him to the chest. She’d always been small for her age.

“Are you - is there something wrong, sir?”

He chuckled. “I’m old, girl, that’s what’s wrong. At least that will resolve itself naturally, in time.”

“...don’t say things like that. The Circle needs you. You’ve got lots of time left.”

“Do you miss it sometimes? The Circle?” It was a cowardly question, unfair, but he couldn’t keep it from slipping out.

She didn’t say anything for a long time, so long that he thought she wouldn’t answer him. Then she said: “Do you remember that time Jowan accidentally set fire to Cullen’s cloak - “

“ - and that’s how you argued you were perfectly justified in upending an entire mug of beer over his head? Why yes, I remember that. Greagoir would never let me forget.”

“Or when I enchanted the folded paper birds so they could fly - “

“ - and used them to cheat on your wards exam. Your instructor had a thing or two to say about that.”

“Or when Senior Enchanter Sweeny snored so loudly during mass that he droned out the Chant?”

“He always did have formidable nasal virtuosity.”  

They both laughed, but it was weak laughter, trying to cross a ravine of silence they would never completely bridge now.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally, low and quick enough that he almost couldn’t make it out. “I’m sorry I left. I should have been there, Maybe I could have done something.“

He felt a now-unfamiliar laughter claw its way up his throat. She always had had that effect on him. “Oh, my child.”

She glanced at him sideways and didn’t remember to hide her guardedness as she did. She hadn’t been that artless since lying about knocking over an inkwell at the age of seven. There was something beautiful about it. “I… what?”

For the first time in so many years he leaned down and kissed the top of her head, remembering a little girl with too-watchful eyes and quick words and a boisterous, ready laugh.

“I am not sorry at all,” he said. “I wish you only happiness. And now,” he added, stepping back and looking out over the hall, “I think your young man is looking for you.”  

Right enough, the boy in question was moving through the crowd, occasionally apologizing profusely for almost knocking things over with his broad frame. He craned his neck to scout over people’s heads. Sophia’s face broke into a reflexive grin when their eyes met.

Irving left the young to do what young people do and stole Sophia’s forgotten glass of punch.  

 

**\-------**

 

_Love -_

_I hope this reaches you. The postal service up here basically consists of handing your letter over to some merchant who’s going in more or less the right direction and hoping a couple of silvers is enough to spur him into temporary honesty, so I’m not making any bets._

 

_Weisshaupt continues to be  unsettling. I think I see why Duncan was so adamant we never involve ourselves in politics now - the Wardens rule here in all but name, and let me tell you, it gives me the ever-loving heebie jeebies. It’ll be a relief to be sent on missions again and not have to deal with all these machinations.. I was never cut out for intrigue; my hair is too nice._

 

 _By the way, that guard with the suspiciously lacy underwear? Turns out he’s not an Orlesian spy after all, he just…_ dances _at one of the ‘inns’ in town three nights a week. (Or so I hear from credible sources. Don’t worry, I’m not about to forget you and frequent seedy establishments - Constable Marten seems to have a downright suspicious amount of insight on this point, though) So that’s what, twenty silvers I owe you now? Maybe I shouldn’t have turned down that throne after all; a treasury is starting to look very practical right about now._

 

_Give my regards to Oghren if he should happen to stay awake for long enough and just… take care of yourself._

 

_I miss you._

_A._

 

_\---_

 

_I got your letter - I don’t even think the merchant peeked at it. You’re a good judge of peddlers, apparently._

 

_Things are more or less as usual here. I found a bunch of broodmothers yesterday. We dropped a great big rock from the ceiling and squashed them, so I took the rest of the evening off and got some reading in. I don’t think this is what most people imagine being (nominally) an Arlessa entails, but at least I’m never bored. (Yes, I’ll be careful, don’t worry.)_

_We have some promising new recruits - at least one of them tried to kill me the first time we met, so I think wherever Zevran is he felt a stab of pride in that moment._

 

_I was almost mugged in a back alley by a dwarf with a peg leg today. I’m saving that leg as a chew toy for Spot. City life  sure is exciting. I’m learning a lot._

 

_Haha told you. I win._

 

_I talked to Anders - you know, the one who fancies himself an escape artist, I told you about that time he outswam the templars. I asked him if I have to worry about there being mountain lions or something in the Anderfels. (He’s from those parts, that’s how he got the nickname), He told me it’s been so long since the templars came for him that he honestly doesn’t remember. He claimed he read somewhere that there might be wyverns, though. Not sure if he’s telling the truth or just pulling my leg, but keep an eye out just in case._

_(I’m so fucking miserable here. I wish you could come back soon.)_

 

_Be safe._

_S._

 

\-------

 

It was a stupid fight, she knew. For one he was right. All of the Wardens suddenly acting like they were being puppeteered by some blood mage was something they couldn’t ignore, and a cure for the Taint was something they couldn’t pass up. Both of those things were true, and she hated them equally.

There might have been screaming, and she might have thrown a lot of stuff around the room after he’d left. The glass ornament on her desk had shattered into a thousand pieces, and she was too undone herself to piece it back together. She’d set the curtains on fire, and ice sigils crusted on the inside of the windows - the room crackled with magic long after she was done, her hair bristling with static electricity. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d lost control like that outside of battle, and she knew it was a very bad sign. She was getting older. The Taint was spreading slowly but surely through her veins.

It was getting harder to pretend.

He wanted them to split up: for her to go after the cure, crossing half a fucking continent to do so, and for him to investigate what was going on with the Wardens. It wasn’t so much that part that disturbed her. They’d split up before, like that first damn miserable year in Amaranthine where everyone had pretended that a mage could be Arlessa just this once and he’d been sent to the Anderfels. And though that had been the shittiest months of her life, he’d come back and everything had turned out fine. They’d given up those months and got years in return. It wasn’t a bad deal.

It was just that she had a bad feeling about this. There was an undertone of doom hanging over it all, like the oppressive silence before a thunderstorm. She didn’t want him out of her sight ever again, not where she couldn’t protect him. Spirits circled around her, sensing the cracks in her like a shark smelling blood, but she sent them scurrying away with the red hot thing filling her chest.

When she cooled down enough she went to their room and opened the door without knocking. He sat on the edge of the bed, face in his hands, but he looked up when he heard her.

“Are you okay?” he asked, getting up. “I was scared for you for a minute there.”

She took his hand and lay down on the bed with him, putting her arms around him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, clinging to him without any trace of dignity. “I’m sorry, of course you’re right, we’ll have to split up, I just…”

He shushed her, gathering her up and holding her so, so gently, and she knew he was smelling her hair the way he did on those nights when he couldn’t sleep. “I’m scared too,” he said. “But this is our only chance for a future. I’d very much like to grow old with you and live in a little house in the countryside and, I don’t know, grow roses, maybe. Lace curtains. That Rivani wine you like. A library. You could do creepy magical experiments on the roses. It’s all very idyllic in my head.”

He thought they had a higher duty, to the Wardens, to the Maker, to something greater. She knew she didn’t, no matter how much he might want her to. She’d never believed in the Maker, on moral grounds as well as empirical ones, and she would always be a mage first and a Warden second. All she knew was that no one else was going to protect the things she loved if she wasn’t there. The Circle had taught her that.

“Wherever you go you take part of me with you,” she said, her hand resting over his heart, her head cold and quiet with an insidious sort of terror. “Do you understand?”

He twined their fingers together over his heart and said nothing.

 

\-------

 

The boy - whose name was Cole, apparently, and who was not quite a boy - had watched her ever since she got to Skyhold, so much so that Morrigan had commented on it. Morrigan had hugged her when she arrived. Sophia wondered how bad she must look for _Morrigan_ of all people to treat her like she was as fragile as a sparrow’s wing, like she was trying to protect Sophia from everything but couldn’t save her from herself. In the end Morrigan helped out with the spells, and her son gave Sophia a couple of angles on the Fade she would never have considered on her own. He was a good kid. She felt a little like the world had ended every time she saw him.

Leliana kept her eye on her and looked sad, sitting with her while she studied, neither of them speaking. She’d written the letter, she’d said all that needed saying. The Inquisitor was friendly enough - a small, nervous-looking elf who was further dwarfed by her large overcoat and who didn’t look people in the eye - but they quickly came to a quiet agreement to stay out of each other’s way. Despite Lavellan’s role as the Inquisitor, she didn’t really seem like a people person. She stayed immersed in her studies and Sophia in hers.

Sophia read about the Fade, and experimented, and drowned herself in complex spells and lyrium. She didn’t think about anything else. 

One night she sat in the tavern, drinking too much and reading the same three sentences again and again without understanding them. Cole appeared at the edge of her vision as from thin air - he did that a lot - and stood beside her.

“Can I sit here?” he asked, in his low whispery voice. “With you.”

“Sure,” she said, scooting to the side. She liked him.

She tried to keep reading, feeling his eyes on the side of her face.

 _I know why I know you now,_ the spirit boy said eventually, sounding pleasantly surprised, like someone finding a last cookie in a box they’d thought to be empty. He spoke directly into her head, for her mind only.

She glanced up at him. “I - what?”

 _I wondered why I knew your face when I’d never met you, but it was_ him _. His head was full of you, of roses in bloom. Laughter lingering, lantern; he’d raised you in place of the sun._

She looked at him silently, her breathing so slow all movement might as well have been drained away from her.

 _You think it meant that he did not really love you, not enough, not if he stayed there and left you behind. Home is where the heart is, homeless, heartless, hoarse from screaming at the void to give him_ back _and still have no answers._

He tipped his head on one side, like he was listening to something  from far away.

 _He thought about you_ , the pale boy said, _in the nightmare place. To keep the dark out._

_He didn’t mean to leave you._

Her head was filled up with silence.

 _I’m sorry,_ he said after a while. _I made it worse._

“I’m going to find him,” she said. It was the only thing her tongue knew how to say these days.

“I hope you do,” Cole said, in his normal voice. “I think you can. The Fade works differently than the real world, and time passes in other ways, and you love him so much. Maybe that’s enough to keep him there for long enough..”

And he sat with her the whole night, saying nothing more.

 

\-------

(“Oh, my friend,” Morrigan sighed, cupping the back of Sophia’s head as she sobbed against her chest. ”I am sorry.”

“I don’t know what to do with myself,” Sophia said, just drunk enough that she couldn’t keep the truth from escaping anymore. “I can’t control it anymore. I’m scared I’m going to hurt someone.”

“You have not done so up until now. I do not think you will. And if you do, I will help you.”

After a while the crying faded out, and she just felt hollow. “I missed you,” she told Morrigan. “I missed you so much.”

“I… missed you too. Had you not been so in love with him, I would have asked you all those years ago… but that is all in the past now. I only wish you to be happy.”

“I would have said yes,” said Sophia. She heard the breath of relief in Morrigan’s chest.

Morrigan leaned her cheek against the top of Sophia’s head and ran her fingers through her hair.)

 

**\-------**

 

In the end she didn’t use any complicated spells or powerful objects or arcane knowledge. She just knew that the magical pressure from the inside felt like it would implode the whole of Skyhold and the surrounding mountains if she didn’t let it out soon, and so she prepared for travel and slinked out of the fortress when no one was looking.

No one but Kieran, that was.

“Wait,” he said, trotting after her, wearing the thick winter coat that made him nearly spherical. “Auntie Sophia, wait for me.”

“Kieran,” she began. “Your mother - ”

“Mother knows I am coming with you,” he said. “I want to help you be alive again.”

She hesitated, but then she saw the look in his eyes - he was not taking no for an answer. He really was his mother’s son.

“Come on, then,” she said, taking his hand.

They walked for most of the night, to a mountain pass that seemed a safe distance from Skyhold. They talked a little. He told her about books he loved and spirits he’d met and how Orlais was pretty strange, and she asked him the kinds of questions you ask a kid you care about - what colour was his favourite, what he liked to study, what he wanted to do when he was older. He was the one who stopped eventually, tugging on her hand.

“The Veil is thinner here,” he said. “It’s easy to make  small tear. Like this,” he said, showing her without words, just a fleeting thought travelling from his mind to hers. “You’re really smart, you’ll know what to do.”

She closed her eyes, trying to fight back the magic for just another few minutes. “Thank you, Kieran. I think… I think you should go back to your mother now, kid. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

He hugged her quickly, though his head only reached up to her navel. “Be okay,” he said, and then he left.

It was so easy. She’d wanted to do this since she was a child, to just let go, and the boy who was both Morrigan’s and Alistair’s child had given her the key she needed, just the right place to apply the pressure. When she was sure he was far enough away she opened the floodgates.

“Give. Him. Back,” she yelled into the storm she unleashed, as the magic picked up around her, tearing at the Veil, shredding the very fabric of the world, crackling through her nerve endings. It would either get her through or burn her from the inside out, because she couldn’t hold on anymore, she was just the catalyst for the rage dancing in her chest like a dying star. “He’s _mine._ Let me through.”

If anyone asked her later how she actually did it she wouldn’t have been able to tell them. It felt like the part of her that was _her_ had melded into the magic, and the magic knew the Fade like a body knows breathing. When she found her boots on the craggy black rocks of the physical Fade she wasn’t surprised.

She walked and walked and walked, but there was no hunger here, or thirst, or even exhaustion, except for what you brought with you. All she knew was the anger that kept her going, the field of which held creatures in the shadows at bay.

When she found him he was lying on the ground, face down, armor stained with dark blood that definitely wasn’t his. He made a pained sound when he heard her footsteps, turning over on his side and squinting at her.

“Sophia?”

She fell to her knees beside him, too afraid to touch him.

“I dreamt about you. There were roses,” he said, smiling. Then his face fell and he reached out to brush the tears away from her face. “Sophia - Sophia, why are you crying?”

And she sobbed like she was being wrenched inside out and held him close.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is actually set in my canon, with Myra Lavellan as Inquisitor and snarky Garrett Hawke. Also I can never leave Hawke in the fade because he is my actual fave, he’s my most beloved video game character of all time, he is my son and I want to protect him from everything bad in the world - and this fixit fic is sort of how I can live with myself. I’m sorry, Sophia. I’m so sorry. (I was worried her managing to get into the Fade like that was a little Mary Sue, but I mean - it was Kieran who showed her how so maybe not?)
> 
> Also I’d like to stress that the reason Irving is so sympathetic here is because we’re watching events through his eyes and he is my Warden’s father figure. In most other ways he’s kind of an asshole - yeah, try to convince yourself that locking a kid up in solitary for a year was necessary for the stability of Circle politics, bro. Well done.


	4. Garrett Hawke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A raven witnesses a wake in Lothering.

There was candlelight inside the house, enough so that it looked like a small droplet of the sun had fallen to earth and puddled on this spot. That was a lot of candles to burn all at once, especially in a simple village like Lothering, which was - as far as the raven could understand these things - respectable, but not particularly prosperous.

Interesting.

As the bird shifted on her branch and tried to think of an explanation, a sound escaped from one of the open windows.  It took some time to recognize it, but then it fell into place: a low, desperate whimper like an animal in pain - a woman weeping.

‘Tis a wake, the raven thought, rather pleased with her own deduction. People were strange and illogical creatures, so far removed from the world of the beasts of the swamp that they followed a separate and ineffable set of laws; you took your victories where you could find them. So. A wake. Someone had died.

The door swung open, and a man appeared in the doorway, carrying a bucket. The raven got a quick glimpse of him - tall, black hair and beard, a dark young face with sharp features - before he called over his shoulder: “I’m going to the well to fetch more water. Yes, I’ll be right back, Mother.” He quietly pushed the door shut behind him and set off into the night. He was not heading towards the well, but into the forest.

On second thought… the man had looked familiar in some way - but she could not remember where she had seen him before.

The raven cocked her head to one side, considering, then took off from the branch and followed him. After a while, when he was a good distance from the house, he dropped the bucket to the grass and collapsed down on a tree stump, putting his face in his hands.

It was a quiet, bitten-down crying, barely to be heard over the rustling of leaves. The raven was reminded, briefly, of that time she had seen a small child parted from his parents in the marketplace and wondered why he was carrying on so. Mother left for weeks at a time sometimes, and it was more a respite than a deprival - but she  had felt a strange sting in her chest that had bothered her the rest of the day. He just seemed so… small and young and lost, sitting there.

Unlike the boy in the marketplace he didn’t seem to expect anyone to come back for him.

All at once she realized why he had seemed familiar - there was another man in Lothering who looked very much like him, but that man had been older, streaks of grey beginning to edge into his temples and his beard. The reason she had not seen it before was that the older man had always been smiling - the lopsided grin of someone who was entirely too clever for their own good, but with watchful, guarded eyes.

The man on the tree stump gasped in a pained breath, hugging his arms close to his chest.

Maybe he smiled like his father when he was not crying his heart out in the woods.

She hopped closer, disturbing the leaves. He looked up, right at her, seeming far too suspicious for the wet trails on his cheeks that were glistening in the moonlight. Then he shook his head and dropped his face into his hands again.

“Why yes, of course, Hawke,” he muttered to himself in a thick, tear-laden voice. He rubbed at his face. “Of course this bird is watching you. That doomsayer in front of the Chantry was right all along and ravens are shapeshifting mages employed by tax collectors as spies. Maybe you should get a lyrium-lined hat while you’re at it.” He added: “I’m sorry, I’m sure you’re not a tax collector, that was unworthy of me. It’s just been a weird few days.”

What manner of lunacy was this? The raven had been called any manner of names while being shooed away from shop stalls and fences before, but she had never been accused of being an agent of the state. She tipped her head to one side. He narrowed his eyes at her. Perhaps she should leave.

“Brother?” called a tentative voice - young and female, almost lost in the darkness, but the man’s head shot up at the sound as had it been the crack of a cannon. “Are you… are you there? Mother is asking for you.”

The man wiped at his face with his sleeve. “I’ll be right there, Bethany,” he said,  his voice suddenly free from any strong emotion.

Peculiar.

He picked up the bucket and walked towards where the open door licked a stripe of light onto the grass. A girl was standing in the doorway now, casting long shadows herself. She hugged herself tightly, though the night was quite warm and her clothes looked sturdy.

When he reached her she uncurled a little and seemed to ask him something.

He gestured with the empty bucket and shrugged, making a comment that was too low to pick up at this distance. For a moment the girl made no reply - she simply froze in the doorway with the candlelight glowing around her dark hair - and then there was a sound. The raven could not place it at first, it was so incongruous here in the place where the night and the candlelight met. It shifted on the branch as it understood and did not understand all at once; it was laughter. The girl was laughing, laughing and putting her arms around her brother, burrowing her face into his chest. And then… well, maybe the shaking of her shoulders was not laughter anymore, and the man stood still and helpless as a statue. The bird realized dimly that he was supposed to do something more, but could not for the life of her have told you what.

Mother. Mother would be home any time now, the bird reminded herself. It was time to leave Lothering and all its confusing pantomimes behind.

The bucket fell to the ground with a quiet thud and he gathered the girl up against him, swaying her back and forth gently with his cheek resting against her hair as she cried.

The bird took off from its perch and flew out into the night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t remember the moment I realized that Morrigan would have been watching Lothering while the Hawke family was still there, but I think it was the exact second my heart broke into a thousand pieces.
> 
> The only people my Hawke hugs are little sister figures Bethany and Merril, because he is Emotionally Dysfunctional. Oh and my Hawke family looks pretty much like the defaults except darker: I always headcanoned that there’s quite a bit of Rivaini blood in the Amell family line.


	5. Melli Cousland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leliana at the ball at Halamshiral.

Leliana does not cry - of course she doesn’t, this is Halamshiral and she knows how to wear masks upon masks. She wonders if she even knows how to take them off anymore.

But every time she sees a woman with dark hair and stooped shoulders and soft eyes she feels the past crowd in on her like an army, merciless, relentless. She remembers her broken body at the top of the tower, her skin slowly going cold under her fingers. They’d been… so young. So young and so stupid.  

She’d give anything to be that young and stupid again, just for a day, just for a single dance.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I love this romance so much, you guys. She's such a good.


End file.
